Living in Oakland, if the Raider wanna play good football, they're capable of it. They have McFadden running the ball, Palmer slinging it around to young receivers, and a decent defense - again, when they want to play.

Lets just say we CAN blow them out, but we're going to have to make McFadden's day tought and put them behind early, otherwise it'll be like the last two weeks.

Good points Yulin. Basically any team that can run the ball well can actually beat the Falcons.

The problem is that we've faced 2 good running teams the past 2 weeks, and nearly lost both games because we could not stop their run. Our run defense is atrocious.

Alfred Morris had a success rate of 80% (8 for 10) on runs on 1st down yesterday, averaging 7.9 yards per carry.

They have to win on 1st down, and this offense has to score points early in games because if they don't then teams will continue to run the ball late in the games. And you potentially get into the same situation we did a year ago vs. the Texans where they basically got stops on defense, and fed Foster & Tate and beat us that way.

It's not a coincidence that the past 2 weeks the Falcons offense has stagnated early.

The beautiful thing for this week is that Oakland's defense has not played well at all this year. But then again, Washington & Carolina's defense weren't considered great, and looked pretty decent to good against us.

The main complaint I've heard about why the Raiders D has struggled is their front 4 is not as physical as it looked in past years. Now if that continues this week, then I expect the Falcons passing attack to roll all over Oakland's porous secondary. But we all saw how Carolina's front 4 kicked our O-line's butt, so it's by no means a forgone conclusion that won't happen again this week.

Is it a big deal this week? Probably not, just like with Carolina and Washinogton, the Falcons should find a way to win. But once we get into the meat of our schedule after the bye, if these problems aren't fixed it's going to result in some losses.

Once again the Falcons run defense gets off to a slow start. Nobody can deny that the 2nd half of the last two games the run defense was terrific. I wouldn't say run defense is atrocious but it certainly has been poor. The lack of threats for Oakland in passing game in general makes me believe that Atlanta won't have too many problems. They'll make sure McFadden is the key and challenge Oakland's receivers to beat them.

I'm hoping for a blowout win because the Raiders may be a top 3 worst team in the league. Atlanta should use this game to pad their stats and take care of business.

I say atrocious because the Falcons were playing with 8-man boxes, and Morris was still easily picking up 10 yards with ease.

They did a better job in the 2nd half vs. the run, with an overall success rate of only 43% (3 for 7) and 25% (1 for 4) on 1st down. I say only, because a success rate of 40% or above is still considered good.

We'd better blow em out and go into the bye on a high note. I'd hate to see us struggle against this team because I'm starting to like hearing guys like Micheal Lombardi and Rodney Harrison talk good about us.

That zone blocking scheme killed us yesterday the same way the Texans zone blocking scheme killed us. The saving grace may be the fact that the Raiders implemented the same blocking scheme and McFadden has had trouble all year reading his blocks and knowing when to put the foot in the ground and get north and south. The same way that facing Cam Newton got us ready for RG3 (before he left the game he hadn't really made any of the plays he had made against other teams). I think a week of seeing that blocking technique and having some good film on it will help us defend it even better against the Raiders. The secondary for the Raiders is worse than the Redskins and their LBs couldn't cover Turner in the flat (I maybe exaggerating a tad). I have watched the Raiders play and the offensive play calling has been very vanilla Nolan should win the chess match against Greg Knapp easily. final prediction:

The thing that has been rattling around in my head the past 24 hours is the idea that our inability to score early in games, has less to do with just random luck and more with the fact that our opponents have figured us out.

I use the term random luck in the sense that over the course of a 16-game season you're not always going to perform your best football each and every week. Often that has to do with matchups, but sometimes it's just random luck in the sense that guys just won't play particularly well.

The first 3 weeks we got off to very fast starts. And I worry did CAR and/or WAS look at the tape, figure out how we did that and stopped us, or was it just maybe we just didn't really play that well. And I think we won those games largely because neither Carolina or Washington have enough playmakers on either side of the ball to really beat us in a 4-quarter game.

Now I also don't think Oakland has it, so even if the Falcons get off to a slow start, I expect them to come back and win the game. Against the Skins, I didn't get that feeling until Cundiff missed that kick. Had he made that kick, it could have affected how the Falcons called the rest of the game, if they found themselves down 10-7 at halftime instead of 7-7 after they drove the field and scored.

So the biggest concern I have is if Oakland who hasn't really played a scrap of defense all year long is also able to stall our offense, then it becomes concerning.

Because unlike Carolina, Washington, & Oakland, teams like Philly, Dallas, NO, and who knows maybe even Arizona & TB may have the playmakers to win a 4-quarter game in the end.

And so then the concern becomes down the road if ever the Falcons and a team like the 49ers should meet, if a weak defense like CAR, WAS, and OAK can slow us down so easily, then what is a good defense like SF going to do against us.

This is just me thinking long-term and thus why I think it's imperative that we see this team get off to a good start vs. Oakland, especially since we'll be at home.

I really don't see a problem with this one. Carson Palmer sucks. Sure they can run the ball, but we will be better against the run this week, although Dent's play is very concerning. This is the kind of game we almost always have won in the Mike Smith era.

The thing that has been rattling around in my head the past 24 hours is the idea that our inability to score early in games, has less to do with just random luck and more with the fact that our opponents have figured us out.

I'd buy that, except it's really just two games, and if they've figured us out, they then "unfigured" us during the second half of those games, or we made adjustments on both sides of the ball.

We should win this going away, and I'd love to have us do that just to hear the pundant stop saying "Well, they struggled against the Panthers and Skins, do you believe their 6-0..". But honestly if Nicholas is hurt and doesn't play, I'm going to take a win any way we can get it and be thankful that we have the bye week coming up.

Raiders DT Richard Seymour has maintained that Oakland’s defense, which is among the league’s most generous (allowing 31.2 points per game), is headed in the right direction even though team observers are having a difficult time finding the positives Seymour has apparently identified.

The Raiders are going to need more than optimism out of Seymour and his fellow starting defensive tackle, Tommy Kelly, in order to improve on defense coming off a Week Five bye.

Seymour and Kelly, who accounted for more than one-third of the Raiders’ sacks last season, have combined for a grand total of only one QB hit through four games — a Seymour sack of Ben Roethlisberger in the fourth quarter of Oakland’s win over the Steelers in Week Three. Seymour’s sack accounts for half of the team’s sack production over the past three games, and the Raiders’ porous secondary is going to continue to be exposed if Seymour and Kelly do not rejuvenate a pass rush that is failing to generate enough pressure.

No team in the NFL has been worse off a bye than Oakland, which has lost eight in a row both straight up and ATS. Not only do the Raiders routinely get blown out, but they don’t even come close to covering the spread.

The Raiders have lost ATS by an average of 10.8 points, which includes four games where they failed to come within 11 points of the spread. They have also lost twice outright as favorites.

Easily the worst game we played all year. Team was flat and unfocused, especially Matty Ice. Still good teams find a way to win, even when they play their worst, and that's just what we needed today. Glad the bye is coming, team looked tired.

_________________When life gives you lemons, find some salt and tequila then invite me!

You summed it up Dave. Abysmal performance by the offense today. Defense didn't look great early, then turned it on during the middle of the game, and then came through in the end. Although give up that 80-yard drive at the end was pathetic.

I knew the Falcons would pull the W out in the end somehow, but the offense's sluggish starts (and today sluggish finish) are red flags for the rest of the season.

It wasn't really the INTs that bothered me so much. 1 was a bad throw, and 2 were due to pressure. But they just never really got into sync outside going to no huddle in the 2nd quarter. And the fact that they got stuffed from the 2 after the Abe strip/Edwards FR was just pretty pathetic.

I give the Raiders all the credit in the world. They did everything they needed to do to win this game, ran the ball, made some big plays, and managed to get a lot of help from the Falcons offense.

If Asante doesn't get that pick 6, the Falcons probably lose because if he's tackled, I had little confidence this offense would have turned that turnover into 7 points.

I'll go back to my first post - Oakland played well most of the day today, and it looked like we brought our D- game today. We won, which is great, but I worry about our OL seriously at this point. No rush game, which is why I think Ryan had the bad first half he did - they were leaving folks deep and just waiting for him to push it down the field, cause the front was holding the run.

Bye couldn't come soon enough, and if Smith wants his 50th win, he's got two weeks to put it together.

I currently don't seeing us winning more than one game in the Playoffs, and that assumes we get there

GREG KNAPP IS AS BAD AS EVER!! With 2.50 minutes left and on our 29 yard line Knapp throws (or instructs someone to call a pass) It was second down I think when he threw ..... Man I would have run the clock as low as I could and continue running, either an open receiver or don't make the play.

Well Knapp sent that Passing play out there and got the pick-six. I understand this is complete second guessing but he's done this his whole career. Wasn't he fired in Oakland by AL Davis?? Once before??

He had 3 points if he plays it smart maybe down to 1:45... I know that's conservative, but after all he did get another touchdown and that's why our 6 points the defense got us was just a gift.

Oh if we don't get another pass rusher besides Abe, we won't win a playoff game.

We miss Lofton so much, now tell me how someone like Lofton can be worth playing two downs with the Saints; but our middle completly sucks without Lofton!!

That letting Lofton go to the Saints is one of the worst that's totally on Thomas D.

I don't think it was letting him go that was the problem. I think it was not adequately replacing him.

When we drafted Akeem Dent last year in the 3rd round, I and several others considered him Curtis Lofton-lite. Similar tools/traits, but not nearly as good. Most graded him as a 5th-7th round pick, a guy that was more likely to be a career backup than a future starter.

However the Falcons felt otherwise, and "reached" on him in the 3rd round. I wanted to give TD & Co. the benefit of the doubt, and figured Dent would be at least adequate as the starter this year at MLB.

But he has not been, and while I haven't reviewed yesterday's game, from watching it live he seemed to struggle. I was never high on Dent, but I too thought he'd be better than this.

It's not Curtis Lofton specifically I miss, it's any generic competent LB. Just look at Philip Wheeler for the Raiders. He went unsigned through the whole month of March this past spring, and eventually signed for a veteran minimum with Oakland, and now he's their best LB. He's a local guy, why didn't we sniff at him?

After a fine game-tying drive, which came on the back of a failed attempt at a game-winning drive, the Oakland Raiders went a long way toward proving correct an old adage in the NFL — Prevent defense only prevents you from winning. With the Falcons starting from their own 20=yard line with only 40 ticks left on the clock, the Raiders played off and didn’t force Atlanta to do anything difficult to move into field goal range. To gain the 43 yards to setup Matt Bryant’s game-winning score, Matt Ryan didn’t complete a single pass of any difficulty, every completion was targeted under the Raiders’ soft prevent defense. This was the final act in a game that saw the Raiders repeatedly shoot themselves in the foot and blow a chance at a marquee victory for rookie head coach Dennis Allen.

This may be the ‘new’ Raiders, but the old Raiders showed there is still work to do to get this team turned around. They racked up another dozen penalties and 110 penalty yards, which stifled their attempt to score the upset and grab their first victory coming off a bye week in a decade. Instead of putting the Falcons away they allowed them to hang around, in spite of an extremely sloppy performance. Despite having the ball for only 39 seconds in the last 6:19 of the game, the Raiders essentially gifted the Falcons a 10-7 scoring advantage in that spell courtesy of a pick-six by Asante Samuel and the game-winning field goal by Bryant. The Falcons stepped up big time to make those plays, but the Raiders should have had control of this game. Instead, they let it frustratingly slip away.

Oakland – Three Performances of Note

Moore to come

After missing the first week of the season, Denarius Moore (+3.8) eased himself back into the lineup with 12 catches for 183 in his first three games. This week he exploded out of the Raiders’ bye week, and collected 104 yards on a season-high five catches, including a touchdown and one forced missed tackle. There were four other incompletions targeted to him, with one of those being the game-changing pick-six by Samuel. On the play, Moore’s QB Carson Palmer left a pass to an out route infield, a cardinal sin, which allowed Samuel to jump the route. Prior to that Moore had displayed his deep speed to get behind Samuel on a go route for a 49-yard gain, and also his elusiveness on short passes — he took a crossing route and beat a tackle from Mike Peterson on his way to a 25-yard touchdown that gave the Raiders a 13-7 lead at half time. The only thing missing from Moore’s game is a consistent hook up with his quarterback, as over the past two seasons less than half of the 98 passes targeted to Moore have been completed. If Palmer and Moore (who to his credit has only one drop on 35 targets this season) can up this mark then teams will really have to start to fear the WR consistently, rather than simply be wary of the occasional big play.

Rushing Statistics Flatter to Deceive

A cursory glance at the Raiders’ team rushing statistics in this game makes for apparently pleasant reading for Raider fans. Their 32 carries, including 27 for their lead back whose durability has been questioned, shows a commitment to the ground game. And their a 4.9 yard per carry average, 150+ yards and a goal-line touchdown suggests a profitable day for the offense. However, if you scratch just a little below the surface you start to see the real picture — one that doesn’t make for such pleasant viewing for Oakland fans. If you remove the Raiders’ three longest rushes, which were important in their own right but are outliers in regards to the team performance, then you reduce the Raiders’ rushing total almost by half and take their yards per carry average down from 4.9 to 2.8. Add into that a costly early fumble by Darren McFadden and you start to see that the Raiders’ inability to establish a consistently effective ground game was one of the limiting factors in them establishing full control of this game. The offensive line blocked solidly as a unit, but there were still breakdowns and Jared Veldheer struggled individually. He yielded three defensive stops, including one on a 3rd-and-goal play that forced a field goal attempt rather than putting six points on the board. At present, the Raiders’ big-play ability is keeping the running game afloat and when you don’t get those it is tough to see at present where the Raiders are going to get offensive balance from.

Getting the Hang of Things Again

Emerging from the University of Texas as a safety and corner ‘tweener’, Michael Huff has spent most of his career at safety, never quite fulfilling the promise that made him the number seven overall pick as long ago as 2006. As a combination of salary cuts and injuries have left the Raiders incredibly short at corner, he has been pressed back into action at the position and, after a slow start in his first couple of games, Huff this week put in a performance that we have rarely seen during his NFL career. Kept busy by Ryan and the Falcons’ passing game, Huff clearly got the better of this encounter (+2.7) as he allowd fewer than 50% of the passes into his coverage to be completed and got his hands to four passes, intercepting one that might have been destined to be an touchdown. Against the Falcons’ top two receivers Huff allowed only 5 of 10 targets to be completed for 62 yards, and gave up just a trio of first downs in the first half, before he collected a trio of pass defenses in the second half. On his interception Huff used his experience at safety to bait Ryan into a throw to Julio Jones and then drifted underneath the post route from his left corner spot to intercept a pass that, at release, Ryan must have thought had a chance at six points. With the Raiders heavily depleted at corner they will be praying that Huff continues to perform in this manner, and not how he played against the Steelers in Week 3.

Atlanta – Three Performances of Note

Ryan Takes a Shelling

He may not have seen much more pressure than he is used to — pressured on 33.3% of his drop-backs against a season average of 30.5% — but when he was under pressure yesterday Ryan was under heavy pressure. He was hit or sacked 11 times by Raider defenders, and on 12 pass attempts under pressure he had a miniscule passer rating of 11.1. That stems from the fact he completed only four passes for 60 yard while throwing two interceptions. As good as Ryan’s season has been so far he is still not comfortable under pressure in spite of taking some strides since last season. Under pressure his passer rating is dropping by more than 30 points, and his completion percentage drops by nearly 20%. Usually this means the Falcons’ offensive line must simply stand up to an opponents’ base pass rush, as Ryan is usually very efficient against the blitz. This week, however, Ryan was only comfortable with no pressure and no blitz. In an unusually poor performance against the blitz Ryan completed only 6 of 13 passes for 56 yards, with one interception for a passer rating of 26.4. If the Raiders hadn’t backed off and played such a soft prevent defense on the Falcons’ final drive, would the national media be throwing a microscope on Ryan’s performance in this game?

One-Man Wrecking Crew

The Falcons didn’t exert an exorbitant amount of pressure (pressure on 13 of 36 drop-backs) on Palmer in this game, but when they got there it was telling, and John Abraham (+7.4) led the charge with three sacks. His third sack was merely a case of touching down an already fallen Palmer, but his first two were telling examples of his ability to dominate either of the Raiders’ offensive tackles. In the first quarter he ripped to the inside of RT Willie Smith to almost immediately sack Palmer at the top of his drop-back, which put the Raiders into a long-yardage situation they didn’t risk seriously trying to convert. While in the third quarter, he tore to the outside of Veldheer to take down Palmer as he wound to throw, which forced a fumble that was returned to the Raiders’ 2-yard line by Ray Edwards. The Falcons may have failed to punch the ball into the end zone, but this got them back on level terms and Abraham had made his presence known on the game. In combination with another four pressures, drawn against four different Raiders, and a pair of holding penalties (one each drawn from the Raiders’ tackles) Abraham and Mike Nolan ensured that the Raiders could never scheme to tie down and take away his threat from just one spot on the defense.

Asante Samuel in a Nutshell

If you’d never come across Samuel before yesterday’s game then he showed, almost completely, the player that he has always been and still is. Equally adept at giving up big plays as making them, Samuel was as infuriating as he was game-breaking for the Falcons. He let up two long gains, including one when he tried to break on a short route that wasn’t even faked for, but made the pivotal play for the Falcons late in the fourth quarter. Without that pick-six, his trademark play jumping a route in front of him, the Falcons almost certainly would have lost this game (though who’s to say the Raiders wouldn’t have played soft with a touchdown lead had they finished that drive) and all that Samuel would have been remembered for from this game was the long gains allowed to Moore and Derek Hagan. The only thing Samuel didn’t provide in this game that we are used to after a shoddy start to the season, was a missed tackle — he missed six tackles in his first four games for Atlanta. Samuel has now gone consecutive weeks without a miss. That’s the first time since the middle of last season that he has managed that feat.

Game Notes

– The 10 quarterback hits recorded by the Raiders’ defense in this game nearly doubled their season total. In their first four games they recorded only 14. The two recorded by Philip Wheeler takes him to eight hits in his past four games.

– Atlanta’s expansive use of three wide packages ensured that Rolando McClain played a career-low 18 snaps — evenly split between run and pass defense.

– With 11 missed tackles (tied for a season high) in this game the Falcons have now missed 52 after six games. AT this pace the Falcons are on course for 138 missed tackles this season, 31 more than they missed last season.

PFF Game Ball

The only Falcon pass rusher who appeared to show up in this game was John Abraham who inflicted on Jared Veldheer the Raider LT’s worst performance since his rookie season. Abraham’s contribution was pivotal in both run and pass game.

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